Why I Grieve for the UCT African Studies Library
Last week’s fire in Cape Town left MPHUTHUMI NTABENI in sorrow over what has been lost. Here the author of the landmark book The Broken River Tent...
Mphuthumi Ntabeni
Be the Miracle You’re Praying For
Like every avid reader of The Southern Cross, the news that the weekly newspaper version would be discontinued gave me a cold shock and a lump in...
How Naive, Mr Justice!
It is unfortunate when great men reveal too many secrets about themselves until they dissolve what maintains of their prestige. This is the feeling I had as...
Basic Income Grant has Catholic Backing
I hear everyone say, with much hope, that the Covid-19 virus will change how the world operates. When I hear that, I keep quiet because I don’t...
Open Eyes To Moral Error Within The Church?
Early last year the Irish-American Catholic novelist Alice McDermott wrote a controversial opinion column in The New York Times about what she called “the moral error of...
In Advent, Have Hope for South Africa
This year will probably go down as one of the hardest in our national psyche. Its memory will be dominated by the dark incidents of gender-based violence,...
The Gospel Evangelises
I write this late in the evening on the feast of St Jerome. I’m a little exhausted, having just arrived from Johannesburg, after a rather hectic weekend...
As I Approach The Thumb Stage Of Life
Nothing exposes us to the vulnerability of life, and the inevitability of our own mortality, like the death of a child. It unsettles and makes us angry...
Are there Limits to Freedom of Speech?
It had been long time coming. I finally gathered enough strength to leave our local community’s social media page. Not only was this forum for our suburb...
Why Xhosa Christians are ‘Majakane’
My friend, a theology PhD student, recently asked me why the first black African Christians in our region, mostly Xhosa, were called “Majakane”. What she didn’t know...
